So last week we talked about doing a stocktake of your life, and basically just looking at all the things that you really like about your life, and all the things that you don't like about your life and the things that you might want to change.
And I just thought I'd share some feedback that I got this week from one of my readers that what she found was that when she did her life’s stocktake, she didn't realise how much she had in her life, that she was taking for granted. She was in tears, apparently, as she was doing her stocktake as she realised how grateful she was for so many things in her life.
So it’s a really powerful exercise. If you haven't done that yet, please do as it’s just a really nice chance for you to see all the things in your life that are good but also what you want to change.
When we talked about Inspired Isabel, we talked about this being a journey for a lifetime, it's not a six or twelve month journey. This is something that you will do and your goals will always change. I've been on my journey for 16 years now and I'm still evolving, I'm still changing, I'm still learning and I'm still growing. And that's what your journey is going to be as well. A Change Journey is not a quick fix. Self-awareness is a new lifetime skill that you can keep developing and bring into all different areas of your life as you continue to grow.
Which leads us into Dedicated Debbie…
She is going to bring your awareness to all the things that take your focus off what you're heading towards.
So if you're heading towards a goal, and there are things that are hindering you, that's when your Dedicated Debbie can kick in, so that she can keep you on track.
Debbie's flower is Wisteria and the Wisteria is a weed. It is a beautiful weed, and you will see it on pergolas and arbores. They will lose all their leaves in winter, and then in spring get all new leaves and these beautiful purple flowers that all kind of look like a bunch of grapes. It is just a stunning amazing flower. But the Wisteria plant itself is this noxious weed that will just take over and choke and strangle anything in its path to keep growing. So, I love that it's Dedicated Debbie's flower because that symbolises the determination and strength that you can have to keep fulfilling your goals and to keep staying on track with your Change Journey when you bring in the energy of the Wisteria flower.
If Dedicated Debbie is all about keeping you on track with your goals, let’s talk about some of the derailers that can hamper you from achieving your goals. As we go through them ask yourself, which ones do you have in your life or have had in your life, in the past and which ones you're going to bring your awareness to so that you can change, so they don’t hinder you as much moving forward.
Derailer No. 1: Great Manifesting
Let’s pretend one of your goals is to speak in an event yet you have a subconscious fear around speaking, as you move closer towards that event, the fear kicks in more and more. Then if you are a great manifester, you can manifest things like laryngitis or a cold which means you won't actually have to get up and speak because you’re too sick.
On the surface (the conscious level), you're like, I was going to speak at this event, and that goal that was going to take me towards something on my Change Journey, but now that I’ve gotten sick, I couldn't do that, so we'll just have to leave it for now. I had an honest reason so it’s not my fault I didn’t achieve that goal.
This is a really classic example of when you are really good manifester and it is your subconscious that has caused the derailer.
Derailer No.2: Hurdles
You are moving along your Change Journey and something trips you up, a life hurdle. You say to yourself “I can’t get over this hurdle, it’s too hard”, “I thought it would be easier than this”, “I can't be bothered making the effort to do that”. Then the reason that you haven't moved forward with your Change Journey is because that hurdle cropped up and you couldn’t motivate yourself to get through it.
In life, we have hurdles all the time and if we stopped at every single hurdle we wouldn't get anywhere. So part of Dedicated Debbie is knowing that these hurdles are going to crop up on your Change Journey. Understanding that it is not always going to be smooth sailing. It is not going to be a lifetime of happy smiles and Pollyanna skipping down the street. That is not what a Change Journey is about. Life happens… people will say things that will derail you, events will happen that will trip you up and each time you face one of these hurdles, you want to bring in your Dedicated Debbie to help you back on track. To help you work out what it is that you need to get through that hurdle, so that you can keep moving forward on your Change Journey.
Derailer No. 3: Making Excuses
When you find yourself making excuses for not doing something, it’s most probably more subconscious beliefs and fears coming up that you’re not consciously aware of.
Maybe you have to have a difficult conversation with somebody as part of your Change Journey and you say to yourself, “I don't want to have that conversation right now, it's not the right time”. So you've made an excuse of why you don't have to have the difficult conversation. But then you find the time is never right, so it goals unresolved and never occurs.
If making excuses is something that you do a lot, I want you to bring in your Dedicated Debbie and have a think about, why you are doing that, what is stopping you from performing a certain task and then look deeper at the subconscious level around what fears or beliefs may be stopping you from moving forward.
Derailer No. 4: People Upsetting Us
There are always going to be people that upset you. You cannot be in total harmony with the 7 billion people on this planet. It's just not possible. You would actually die trying because you'd be totally exhausted trying to people please everybody.
There are going to be people that don't agree with your beliefs, that don't agree with your actions, that think that you should do something or be someone else. They're going to tell you how to behave or tell you what you need to do.
So, if this is one of things that keeps derailing you from your Change Journey, then I invite you to have a look at what you can learn from those relationships. Rather than walking away every time you have somebody in your life that is upsetting you, rather than avoiding them, have a look at what you can learn from them.
Many times when people upset us, they're projecting back to us what we're projecting to them. For instance, if you're projecting super, overconfident, arrogance, that's what you will get in return and if you're sitting there saying to yourself “that person is so arrogant, they make me so angry”, then I invite you to have a look at whether you may be displaying arrogance or defensiveness when you're around that person and are they just reflecting it back to you.
Use the people that upset you, as a really good tool to work out what it is in you, that you might need to change. All the things that you don't like in other, may be things that you don’t like in yourself.
This is an extremely hard thing to do, but I have found it so beneficial in my own Change Journey and I have discovered many things about myself that I have since changed, which in turn has changed my relationships with the others.
Derailer No. 5: Distractions
Distractions are bright shiny objects that take your focus away from your goals.
Let's say you're working towards Goal A, you're doing all the steps and you're moving further towards goal and you're feeling really good about yourself. Then somebody says “hey, check out this new app / thing / idea that I’ve got” and you take on their enthusiasm and move in a different direction toward the bright new shiny object. You leave the path you were travelling on and head off on a side path that is exciting and new and you're like, “oh my god this is so exciting and I'm here and I'm really enjoying this shiny object”. You’re not really aware of it, but
By the time you realise you are totally distracted from your original goal and where you were heading you’ve lost momentum. You've lost your place on the original path and you need to backtrack a bit and figure out where you were and what you need to do to get back on track. The distraction was good but it was also a big time waster.
Derailer No. 6: Procrastination
I'm sure you know what this is. We all did it at school when we had to do homework. Procrastination is basically putting off something that you don't particularly want to do and do everything else everything else possible to make yourself feel busy, without actually doing the task at hand.
Ironically I find that when I procrastinate and then eventually get to the point where there's nothing else that I can do and I just sit down and do the task, it takes me a lot less time that what I had thought and it is not nearly as painful as what I thought.
We build things into mountains when in fact they are just mole hills. So if you find that procrastination is something that crops up a lot of you, bring in your Dedicated Debbie, assign yourself some time to do the task at hand and then just get it done.
So, all these scenarios are different ways that you can get derailed off your Change Journey and Dedicated Debbie is here to keep you on track and keep bringing you back to the right path so you can head towards your goals and stay away from the derailers.
I invite you to have a look at your past, look at other situations where perhaps you were derailed from a task and ask yourself, which derailer is my biggest challenge. We all do them, so there is definitely nothing to be ashamed about, it’s just about bringing your awareness to them and saying “No, this time I'm not going to get distracted or I'm not going to procrastinate or I'm going to get through that hurdle”
I'm going to bring in my Dedicated Debbie and move forward on my Change Journey, regardless of how I feel, regardless of whether it is scary, because I have her by my side and I can move through this.
Having said all that… if you are constantly getting derailed or distracted or manifesting up excuses for reasons why you can't do something that I invite you to go back to your original goal and check in with yourself; is this a goal that’s really for me? Is this a goal that excites me? You may find that in fact it's a goal that somebody else wanted you to do or a goal that you thought you “should have”. Really just having that awareness and if it's not your goal maybe you scrap it off the list.
Then the other thing that I want to talk to you about is when the decisions you are making through your Change Journey are really big and affect other people. For instance, in my Change Journey I left my marriage. So that was a major thing and it affected a lot of other people.
So I had to ask myself in my Dedicated Debbie phase, “do I really want to do this, no matter what, no matter who I hurt?” I was asked that question by my girlfriend, who is a psychologist, and I remember her vividly saying “This decision that you're going to make, and this path that you're going to take is going to hurt a lot of people. Are you sure this is what you want?” I had to spend some time really looking at that and thinking to myself, is this what I really want. And when the answer was yes, then I could move forward.
So if, on your Change Journey, you have big decisions that you're going to make, and they affect (or even hurt) other people, then I invite you to really take some time and ask yourself, is this something that you really want to do? Can you do it regardless of who you hurt, if you're putting yourself first? It doesn't mean it's going to feel good when you do it, but it will ensure your motivation behind it in the first place.
When I made my decision and went through with it, I hurt a lot of people and it didn't feel good. I did a lot of crying and it was a really, really tough time… it wasn't like I just skipped through a marriage breakup. I had to really bring in my Dedicated Debbie and keep going because I knew at the end of the day it was a decision that I really wanted to make.
So Dedicated Debbie is about looking at what your derailers are, bringing your awareness to them and then using that awareness so that those derailers don’t affect you moving forward. She’s also about ensuring any big decisions you are going to make are what you really want to do.